Iranian regime arrests man for selling Internet filtering software

Cyber police official Mokhtari Nasab told state-run Mehr news agency: "In line with the monitoring of Internet offences, increasing the security of Internet users and supervising the Internet, a website and its operator that advertised and sold illegal filtering software was uncovered.

"After an investigation, the accused who was from the city of Takestan, west of Tehran, was identified and arrested.”

The arrest comes only days after two bloggers were summoned to court in Tehran for operating a website in support of political prisoners of the regime.

While they await trial, their homes and office were raided and pillaged by regime cyber-police and their business was closed down.

The tough action against illegal internet use comes after paranoid Iranian rulers issued draconian new directives earlier this month to prevent people accessing banned websites that threaten the regime.

The state's Ministry of Intelligence and Security gave Internet café owners a list of 20 orders, including making them purchase their bandwidth only from state certified companies, banning VPN software that can bypass state-filtered websites and keeping a record of all customers' online activities six months.

Failure to comply with the orders meant being arrested by Iran's cyber police and having their premises closed down, they were warned.